A BOOK OF BEASTS. 
187 
A BOOK OF BEASTS. 
MONO the many Bestiarii, or Books of Beasts, so popular 
in the Middle Ages, not the least was the Libro delle 
Bestie, done into the vulgar tongue of Italy by Bono 
Giamboni from the original French of Brunetto 
Latini, and now accessible to readers of Italian for the modest 
sum of four soldi."' 
To students of Dante, the name of Brunetto Latini will 
recall one of the most pathetic scenes in the Divine Comedy. 
Passing along the dyke in the seventh circle of hell, Dante feels 
his garment plucked, and, turning aside, recognizes on the 
burning sand below, in the pitiless, eternal, flaming rain, the 
dear and kind paternal image of his former master, him who in 
the world above had taught how a man might immortalize his 
name. Then the long colloquy and the parting admonition : 
“ Let my Tesoro be commended to thee, wherein I still live.” 
Alas for the vanity of human ambition ! none but the curious 
now reads this “Treasure,” in which was summarized in pon- 
derous tome the knowledge of the age. “ Nel qual io vivo ancora.” 
No, not in the Livres dii Tresor does Ser Brunetto now live, but 
rather crouches, a shame-stricken figure branded for all time 
with infamous sin, against the lurid background of Dante’s 
Inferno. 
When a professor in the Middle Ages wished to make a 
book on Natural History, he did not ask the Government to 
send him to Africa or other of the four quarters of the earth. 
He withdrew to his closet, and from his own unchastened 
imagination and the study of many folios, evolved something 
which, if not scientifically accurate, was certainly entertaining. 
Those were uncritical but picturesque times. The world had 
not been surveyed from China to Peru. Men lent an eager ear 
to travellers’ wondrous stories of 
Antres vast and deserts idle, 
Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven ; 
. The anthropophagi and men whose heads 
Do grow beneath their shoulders. 
Latini’s classification would scarcely commend itself to a 
South Kensington examiner. His divisions are four : fishes, 
serpents, birds, mammals. Classed with the latter we are not 
a little startled to see chameleons and unicorns. Nor are we 
reassured when we find bees put with the birds, and basilisks and 
dragons with the serpents. We are positively shocked to meet 
with oysters, crabs, whales, crocodiles and sirens among the 
fishes. Latini is very fond of this classification into fours. 
He divides the universe into four elements : earth, air, fire, and 
water, which have four qualities : the earth is cold and dry ; 
Biblioteca Diamante, No. 13, 20 centesimi. 
